Fireflies and Good Intentions
by Relala
Summary: In the end it is not the glass jar, full of twinkling stars which he has captured from the velvet sky, but his heart that shatters so easily.•REDUX•
1. Part One

**~ part 1: fireflies and good intentions ~  
**

Spencer Ried. **T.** 1,353.

* * *

Written for** lady of scarlet** and based off one of her stories.

* * *

"i. _Our little garden of life, such a charming, fairy-like spot."_

* * *

Little Spencer Reid is a delicate and tender six years of age when Diana declares, on a sudden fickle whim, that nature is a valuable treasure meant to be cherished by all men and creatures alike. He dismisses this statement, assuming with adult-like reasoning that this is one of her so-called _inspirations_; a foolishly naive idea that she will dismiss later as nonsense. After all, he reminds himself, no matter how many places he has marvelled at within the pages of books, he has never once stepped an inch outside of the confines of Las Vegas. Nor has he ever planned on it. _(Of course, I've been to such places as Italy, Prague and France. I've seen the English valleys and seen the hot sun on the Nile...all within the pages of my books, he thinks.)_

The next morning the sun is nothing more than a faint reddish glow which spreads across the lawn, causing the droplets of dew to twinkle like fallen stars upon the grass, when his mother wakes him up to go camping-their truck packed and ready to roll. The young boy dons his bright blue jacket and outdoor runners, slipping his fingers into the holes of his winter gloves and placing his annoying glasses upon his nose with a sense of uncertainty.

He is yanked unceremoniously into the offending vehicle without any thought given to his emotions, and as their old Ford pulls out of the driveway, Diana speaks of towering evergreens and such beautiful birds that even the angels weep when they see them. Spencer does not pay attention to her this once, for he cannot hear her singsong voice amid the roar of the worn-out engine and the pounding of his heart.

The tattered old house which he has grown so accustomed to—with its peeling paint, cracked cement walls and faulty doors which creak and moan whenever you disturb them—disappears behind him, turning into many long and winding roads which even _he _(Spencer Reid, boy genius) cannot conceive of remembering. The twist and turns they take along the thousands of pathways become lost in the abyss of nothingness containing the things which he has actually forgotten and no longer recalls. _(There are a great few things here in the nothingness, Spencer knows, a great few things which he has forced himself to erase from his spotless mind. Things such as his Father shooting himself in the foot with a nail-gun when Spencer was no more than three and his Father crying over it. Not, of course, that Spencer remembers this.)_

* * *

ii." _Blossom the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels"_

* * *

Spencer honestly tries to enjoy this adventure of hers. He abandons his pessimistic attitude in anxious eagerness, hoping above anything that at least she will be happy, telling himself that it does not matter that she has dragged him away from the presence of his peers but also from the comforting bliss of his books. _(His precious, lonely books, collecting dust on his red-brown mahogany shelf back home.)_

Diana does not take notice of her son's gloomy expression and takes his forced smiles for genuine excitement as she coats him down in bug spray which is meant to keep the blood hungry parasites _(mosquitoes) _at bay. In the end it is merely pointless, however, as the spray leaves a sticky film over his skin which only makes him itch horribly and the gooey marshmallows which he eats like a barbarian off of unsanitary sticks only attract the bugs all the more.

She teaches him about the constellations and he decides, with a passionate awe in his heart, that the only thing good about the countryside is the vast open skies which are populated with beautiful stars. He has never really seen them before, only the burning luminescence of flashing neon sins and slander, and he watches them with reverence. He wishes he could pluck them down with his chubby hands _("The stars pluck from their orbs too, And crowd them in my budget; And whether I'm a roaring boy, Let all the nation judge it.") _and place them within a glass jar so that he will not have to sleep within the breathing darkness which seeps from the sky and flows into his fearful heart.

"Tell me again about _Canis Major_, Mother, please," he requests when the air gets too chilly and the sky too dark for him to endure the darkness. He misses the perpetual, iridescent glow of Vegas suddenly and berates himself for not thinking of grabbing his flashlight.

"_Canis Major and its neighbouring constellation, Canis Minor, the Little Dog, appear in a number of myths. One legend has the two dogs sitting patiently under a table at which the Twins are dinning. The faint stars that can be seen scattered in the sky between Canis Minor and Gemini are the crumbs the Twins have been feeding to the animals."_

Her voice, smooth and loving, lowered to an aching whisper full of professionalism and wonderful joy. He strained his tiny ears to hear her above the whistling wind of the nighttime and let his genius mind fall into her enchanting story, her power of speech transporting him into a vivid scene where he could literally feel the thick fur of Sirius caressing his fingertips.

The world felt so small and safe to Spencer in that instant, a compacted space full of never-ending knowledge and affection; so full of untapped potential.

* * *

iii. "_Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed"_

* * *

"Too many words, too many words, too many words..." Diana mumbles under her breath as she paces along the red-wood floor boards, which remind Spencer so much of his book shelf that he yearns for printed pages in agony. She goes around the room so fast that he naively thinks she will make deep creases in the floor as she chants the disturbing phrase like an amazing prayer.

_Too many words_, he muses.

He doesn't recognize it as a quote, nor does he understand what she means by this. He listens intently, waiting for a clue as to what she wants, but he cannot make sense of her incoherent ramblings and merely settles for watching her footsteps and waiting for her to trip over her own feet. She never does.

Instead she flutters determinedly like some exotic butterfly through the cabin, gathering the few books she brought to read to him within her paper-thin arms and discarding them, rather neatly, onto the floor.

Spencer watches in fascination from a rickety wooden chair in the kitchen as she arranges and re-arranges them, curiously wondering what she was searching so desperately for. It seemed an eternity to him before Diana was finally and at long last satisfied by her baffling work. Eagerly awaiting an explanation, his young face registered acute horror as she flipped to page 367 and began tearing out the paper.

It was then that he realized the fate of her mid-nineteenth century poetry.

Diana ripped and tore the pages of her books with her fingertips, the shredded remains of her lost companions falling around her as her son recoiled at their deaths. The ground to Spencer's eyes seemed to be littered with the blood of innocents, a painful testimony to his mother's growing insanity which he would not accept. Could not accept.

He made no move to stop her horrendous massacre, however; if she wished the pages to be removed from her novels, they would certainly be removed. The books were, of course, replaceable. _(For the most part, anyway. That last one was a classic.)_

When at last he thought he could take no more of the sound of paper being ripped and the sight of words on the pages being lost before his very eyes, he retrieved a box of cheerio's from the cupboard and ate them dry on the front porch.

Everything would be okay when she was finished, he told himself. Perhaps the pages would make good kindling for their _(disgusting)_marshmallows which she liked so much.

* * *

**First draft**: _01-30-09_

**Revisions**: _1-5-10 _**&**_ 9-23-12_


	2. Part Two

**~ part 2: fireflies and good intentions ~  
**

Spencer Ried. **T.** 2,191

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_iv. "Is there no way out of the mind?"_

* * *

The next day dawns with bleak skies _("And I looked up into the hazy sky. Black clouds in the distance, Black clouds overhead")_ and horrid forecasts. Fog, as thick as the icing he likes to coat onto his cupcakes, flows like silver ghosts through the evergreens as they reach for the slippery wetness of the grass, matching the streams of tears adorning his face.

Spencer wipes the tears off his cheeks in fits of childish desperation as they begin to itch and contemplates where to take things from here. He is miserable and hungry but he does not know what to do, as Diana has long since fallen into staring blankly up at the ancient wooden roof from the comfort of her bed, and will not respond to his questions.

A small, thin, yellow book has somehow miraculously survived her spree of slaughter and he fetches it from her bedside table. _Golden Moments by HENRY VAN DYKE _reads in large, bolded, black letters which leap off the page and ensnare his senses. He has never lain eyes upon this book, nor heard of this man. He cracks the cover with inexplicable greediness. At last, a distraction from the world around him which is so quickly breaking at the seams.

He decides to read aloud to her as she had done for him all the numerous times he was sick with high fevers and a running nose.

"_Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of _**Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.**

_She has her own scale of values for these mementoes, and knows nothing of the market price of precious stones or costly splendor of rare orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt that the most important things are always the best remembered; only we must learn the real importance of what we see and hear in the world is to be measured at last by its meaning, its significance, its intimacy with the heart of our heart and the life of our life. And when we find a little token of the past very safely and imperishably kept among our recollections, we must believe that memory has made no mistake. It is because that little thing has entered into our experience most deeply, that it stays with us and we cannot lose it._

_You have forgotten many a famous scene that you traveled far too look upon. You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mount Blanc, the roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of Patti's crystalline voice has left no distant echo in your remembrance, and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of a dream. But there is a nameless valley among the hills where you can still trace every curve of the steam, and see the foam bells floating on the pool below the bridge, and the long moss wavering in the current. There is a rustic singing of a girl passing through the fields at sunset that still repeats its far-off cadence in your listening ears._

_There is a small flower trembling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath the open sky, that never withers through all the changing years; the wind passes over it, but it is never gone-it abides forever in your soul, an amaranthine blossom of beauty and truth."_

* * *

_v. "A boy's will is the wind's will"_

* * *

Spencer's melodic voice faded into a saccharine hush, flowing through the air like a gentle breeze of autumn wind. The descriptive imagery that the author painted inside his head came like honey to his lips, sweet and sharp to his senses as the book came to a close.

The sun dipped back below the horizon and the stars began to twinkle and beckon as Diana closed her exhausted eyes, no longing having to pretend to listen. The looming darkness of the country night time began to slip in from the open windows, dancing across the floor in the playful mannerisms of a cat.

He wonders, while gazing at her form that has been wrapped in such a thick cocoon of fur blankets that she is barely visible, if she will be frightened without a nightlight to comfort her. He knows he would be afraid and the thought fills him with empathy.

Padding around the cabin with the swift feet of a ninja, in search of anything that would emit some sort of light, the thought hits him that he knows how to save her and he devises a clever plan. The idea of plucking down the stars from the velvet sky is a more than a little farfetched, but Spencer knows that if the stars are as powerful as Diana says, so full of wonderful power and grace, then they can (surely) save her.

He just has to find a way to capture them.

Slipping his chubby arms through the dangling sleeves of his jacket and placing his tiny feet within his runners, he takes the old black flashlight that Diana has labelled for merely emergences, and rummages hastily through the cupboards and closets of the kitchen until he finds exactly what he has been looking for. A tall, fat and round glass jar with an easy screw lid. It seems like some forbidden treasure to his eidetic mind.

Having retrieved all the supplies, Spencer sets out on his mission by slipping like a thieving fox out the creaky screen door and making his way towards the woods. The darkness might have swallowed him whole if he had not switched on the flickering yellow flame of his flashlight before reaching the menacing looking trees.

Logically, as the sharp twigs and swaying branches grabbed at his clothes and yanked at his blond-brown hair, he knew with good reasoning that there was nothing to be afraid of within these woodlands. The park ranger had assured him that there were no bears in this area, or cougars, or anything else that may have an appetite for little boys such as he.

Unfortunately for Spencer, he was still only six, and six year olds with wild and vivid imaginations should not go wandering in the woods alone at night time. Every shadow had limbs, every strange noise was a scream, every snap of a twig under foot was something lurking in the bushes waiting for him to wander too far.

* * *

_vi. "Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."_

* * *

_("Lichen, ivy, and moss, Keep evergreen the trees, That stand half-flayed and dying, And the dead trees on their knees")_ Spencer recites as he brushes the thick branches and pointed needles out of his face, pushing onwards through the shadowy woodland with his flashlight in a deadly grip. _("My mother said that I never should, Play with the gypsies in the wood; The wood was dark; The grass was green;"…)_

The young boy stopped short of finishing the last poem, looking around with the frightened eyes of a fawn for the outline of the cabin which he could no longer find. The pathway behind him was now no more than a trail of crunched leaves _("The leaves lie thick upon the ground. It's there I love to kick my way, And hear the crisp and crashing sound.")_ and unmarked muddy splashes of wet dirt and grime.

Reprimanding himself with the stiffness of a soldier, he told himself that he had to be brave and move onwards, he reminded himself that he could be brave for his mother's sake, that he absolutely couldn't afford to be afraid of the dark. The weight of his mother's fate was in his hands now, and there wasn't any point in turning back without what he had come searching for in the first place. He had to keep going.

It wasn't a choice.

After a few more minutes of wandering through "_The Hollow Wood" _by the blissful light of his marvellously appreciated flashlight, he came upon the elusive treasure which he so desperately sought. _("I went down a narrow, narrow road, and I lost my cap. The firefly found it. Firefly, firefly, give me back my cap!")_

They were not nearly as magnificent as the stars which hung above his head as they only flickered dimly in all their insect glory...yet they were the only things out in the woods which blazed even half as well as his glowing marvels and their elegant minuets made him smile in childish delight. With an attentive heart, he reached out with gentle hands towards his mother's hopeful saviours and smiled, pleased, when they did not fly away.

One firefly brushed smoothly against his giant fingertips and Spencer flinched in overjoyed excitement, a gasp of awed fascination escaping his pink lips. The minuscule creatures fluttered beautifully around him, illuminating the darkness of worry which lay within his soul with their playful loops and twirls.

Spencer just knew they could save her, no matter how impossible it seemed.

One by one he tried to capture their fragile bodies within his cupped hands until finally he had succeeded in isolating a dozen or more inside the glass planet which was his jar. He felt the warm tingling of shame burn his conscious as he screwed the lid back on. Spencer considered what he was doing with guilt.

After all, he wouldn't like being trapped in a jar against his will, and he wondered if this would constitute a violation of their civil rights which, his mother had assured him, was not a very nice thing to do.

Resolving the problem by promising himself that he would release the innocent fireflies first thing in the morning after Diana had been cured, Spencer turned back the way he came, wishing horribly that he had thought to leave some sort of trail behind him. It was only now as he wandered backwards that he realized how far away he'd strayed during his quest.

The pearlescent white crescent moon winked and peeked out at him from between the branches of the forest canopy as the dried leaves and twigs snapped loudly beneath his feet. Suddenly, his flashlight flickered, dimmed, and then extinguished.

He stood petrified, clutching the glowing fireflies to his chest, imagining that the rapid thumping of his heart against the jar might shatter the glass. It was dark. So black and gloomy, the light of the stars suddenly obscured somehow.

There were things moving around in the bushes. Horrible things; monsters.

The fireflies did very little to help him, just danced around in their new glass prison, banging into the sides with hopeless gestures but finding no reprieve. _("A bee, a living bee, at the windowglass, trying to get out, doomed, it can't understand.")_

Spencer clenched his eyes shut tightly, feeling the skin of his eyelids crushing down and bunching against the skin of his face with a ounce of pain as he tried to control the fear that had suddenly exploded like a grenade in his stomach. The sudden war cry of the monster behind him made his hazel eyes jerk open in terror, only to see its huge black wings spread wide across the sky above him.

He screamed, running in blind panic.

Spencer ran through the darkness, the looming threat of things unknown that didn't logically exist chasing after him, right on his heels and flying above him. He felt their hot breath along the back of his neck; felt his chest heave as his face went red. He couldn't move his limbs any faster but in a last ditch effort he tried to speed up...and failed miserably at the attempt as claws grabbed at him, catching hold of his jacket hood and pulling him back with such force that he tumbled to the ground, scraping the palms of his hands as he tried to catch himself before he hit the dirt.

The heavy glass jar hit the ground with a deafening smash, shattering into thousands of sharp pieces which pierced his hopes at ever having found a cure. The fireflies it contained immediately dispersed in a daze, drunkenly floating out into the night, no doubt savouring their new found freedom and mocking their young captor.

He sat in the dirt, only a few precious feet away from the cabin, absorbing the shock and watching the damn raven drift across the stars. (Only a bird.) His hands and hopes throbbed as he contemplated his cowardice. He felt the profound weight of his failure in a way that only a six year old could. Deep down though, he knew that all the fireflies and good intentions in the world couldn't make her better. Maybe nothing ever would. He loved her so, and that would have to be enough for tonight.

Tomorrow, perhaps, he could try again.

* * *

**First draft**:_01-30-09_

**Revisions:**_ 1-6-10_** & **_9-23-12_


	3. Part Three

**~ part 3: fireflies and good intentions ~  
**

Spencer Ried. **T.** 1,373

* * *

_vii. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools."_

* * *

Thousands of tomorrows come and pass, becoming nothing more than a frenziedly arranged album of memories, eternally tinged with the feeling of foreboding. He stores the mildly stained photos within his heart and forces the images of her vacant smile and dull brown eyes into the nonexistent nothingness. He denies that they exist. _(Because they don't exist, of course. The nothingness is a blank abyss of unremembered memories.)_

Unremembered events and places, unremembered feelings...nonexistent moments. Moments like the seconds in which Spencer can hear the eternal _tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock_, of the old grandfather clock which he has listened to since the age of nine when his Father brought it up the wooden stairs to rest upon the left hallway wall. It hasn't changed in the slightest since then, and the little boy always found it quite comforting...

It's too bad that now he is a man.

Too many hopeful tomorrows have past the genius by, like beautiful birds zooming faraway from bitter cold winters, for him to still be a child. Carefree yesterdays and true blue skies are no longer an actuality in his world of grown-up responsibilities and terror, because hopeful tomorrows have become barren, desperate yesterdays. When he looks back on these times, he wonders how so much time could have passed without him realizing it.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror one night, he gazes in wonderment at the form that gazes back upon him. A pink lipped, chestnut eyed pale face surrounded by flowing dirty blond hair on top of a long and lanky body which stands so very much higher than the yellow countertops he once thought so terribly brobdingnagien.

Spencer had never been one prone to paroxysms at any point in time, yet now he finds himself panicking horribly at regular intervals, unable to control the raging infection of acute pain which sets root within his heart. He has grown up without ever noticing. He has been so badly caught up in the silky spider web of his mother's illness that he has not ever had the time to care about himself. And yet, his obliviousness has been for nothing.

There is no way to save her, he knows, and he must seal her fate. He feels a dark, gapping chasm vast as the skies splitting inside his head, ripping apart his fragile emotions to form the thoughts of what he should be doing with his life and what he was doing now because of her.

There is a horrible choice to be made here, he knows.

And it isn't even a real choice.

* * *

_viii. "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."_

* * *

As he stumbles awkwardly through the automatic doors of Bennington Sanitarium clinic, demanding with gentle and nervous politeness the papers which would soon seal his innocent mother's fate, Spencer wonders if anyone can see the dark and hollow expression within his eyes. Perhaps the lenses are just too thick for them to see into the windows of his soul. _(The windows of my soul I throw wide open to the sun.)_

_Insanity is one of the things which came out of Pandora's box_, he thinks with tears in his eyes as he signs the papers with a flourish._ And I shall never sail upon a boat of clouds with the stars as my companions and reach the destination of where her mind lays on Mount Olympus. But my tender memories of wonderful yesterdays shall remain eternal like the Gods._

Yet all the tender memories in the world cannot stop the worst moment of his entire life from replaying and replaying inside his head. He has sent her away unwillingly into the arms of people who in all reality do not truly care whether she lives or dies, and silky promises of words that shall be written across blanks sheets of paper will never mend the pain of that.

"_I'll write to you," those where your exact last words to your schizophrenic mother as the big men in their official uniforms dragged her screaming form out the front door into the happy sunshine of another summer's day. You have damned her to a certain Hell, Spencer, and you'll never be able to take it back._

He crawls, disheartened, into his bed and buries his face into the soft pillows as rivers of tears free within his chest. Being eidetic has never been a _Spiderman comic_ adventure, no nerd-becomes-amazing story, but before this night he had never thought of his mind as a curse. That night, however, Spencer realizes that being a genius is not fun.

That night he falls into a fitful sleep _(For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams-)_ full of the deafening sounds of an ancient grandfather clock. He imagines that he can remember every single tick and tock it has ever made within this household, as the Pendulum swings within an open abyss of darkness, suspended by the strings of Life and Love. Every swing is a race against time and he knows he cannot stop it.

When he wakes the next morning, the house is cold and lonely with her gone, the air no longer filled with her incoherent mumblings and the sounds of her scuffling footsteps no longer making him smile when she comes up the creaky stairs. He half expects to walk into the living room and see her there, curled up like a frightened kitten on the sofa, eyes staring at the screen so as to make him wonder what cinema she was watching that the rest of the world was so oblivious to.

But she is not there.

Diana Reid is gone, erased from this space like some dark smudge of pencil on clear snowy white paper, and without her Spencer cannot go on within this haunting place without agony and pain. Breathing fresh courage into his heart, the young man is determined to pack up all his books and clothes without tears and to contact Jason Gideon as quickly as possible.

It is time to leave the past behind him and move onwards, tucking the nuisance of painful memories into the photo album of his life. He pushes away the memories of vacant eyes and hysterical laughter, immediately hiding them away within the abyss of useless things of which he no longer wishes to recall.

But he can never truly forget her. She lives in every shadow, dances in every sun drop that hits his hazel eyes behind his glasses. She is a little piece of his soul carved out of his chest, in the flesh, and he doesn't know what he will do without her.

As the chilly tears dribble down his aching face, Spencer places a trembling hand upon his chest. There, just under the thin-feeling skin, he feels the throbbing of his breaking heart.

* * *

_IX. "Drugs are a bet with your mind."_

* * *

Spencer ambled into the BAU bathroom nonchalantly and melted into the white walls as if he were a broken countertop. The two men in high fashion business suits didn't take any notice of him and soon the swinging door shut behind them with a gentle _whoosh. _The young genius revelled in darling hush, the beautiful apartness of the vacancy of other humans. _(Silence is the true friend that never betrays.)_

The wonderful plastic tube of lovely utopia tumbled in a clumsy fumble from his shaking and jittery fingers, the metal point meeting his delicate flesh and kissing his innards with lipless passion, as he slammed down on the transparent plunger, the liquid bliss entering his veins.

Concealed within an unsanitary sanctuary of his own little world where the thoughts and concerns of his so-called friends could not reach him, Spencer breathed a sigh of relief in a world of chaos. The gentle washing tide of the drugs took his mind out onto a melody of ocean waves.

Spencer Reid floated away from reality in a boat made of clouds and just beyond the horizon lay the true blue skies of carefree days.

* * *

**First draft:** _01-30-09_

**Revisions**: _1-5-2010 _**&**_ 9-23-12_


	4. Part Four

**~ part 4: fireflies and good intentions ~  
**

Spencer Ried. **T.** 1,699

* * *

_x .The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live._

* * *

"Spencer..."

Merely reading the smudged and hasty scrawl of his beloved Jason Gideon's hand upon the yellowish paper scalds his eyes with swollen teardrops._(This laceration of the genius' psyche greatly resembles the wounds of ruined needle marks-crimson and purple blotches of hurting which cause intense irritation. They are a constant reminder which Spencer will eternally find himself picking at in odd moments until it reopens and bleeds, and scabs over. The blending of pleasurable pain.)_

"...I knew it would be you who came to the cabin to check on me."

A painfully ear-splitting wail, like that of a fatally injured prey animal, bubbled up from Spencer's throat, filling his slender chest to full capacity and spilling like flowing river water from between his tender lips when he could no longer hold the heartache inside himself. His chestnut brown eyes danced with wild frenzy around the cramped room to land on random objects-the wall, the lamp, the floor, the window.

He did not see any of it.

Within his head swirled a brilliant phantasmagoria of his former mentor, the man who had taught him so very much…memories of wonderfully challenging chess games…the victory of cases solved...and the sorrow of cases lost. Silly jokes and trivial insults, gentle hearted moments and tough love moments, looks of loving indulgence and strict rule. In short, the life and times of the young Spencer Reid with Jason Gideon. And, as the memories whirled within his head like a picture film, one thought consumed his soul: _Gideon is gone._

The movie was about to end.

He clutches the letter within his shaking hands, tears trembling in his eyes, and walks out the cabin door, gazing forlornly up at the distant stars. Their effulgent radiance touches the very depths of his soul and he remembers with horrid clarity that the last time he ever saw such beauty as this was in a desolate countryside in a cold field with his not-yet-quite insane mother whispering Norse mythology into his sea-shell sized ears. The memory fills him with longing and he wishes that for just a few seconds he could go back, back into a time when life was not so painful and choices not so hard to make. _("Yesterday a child came out to wonder/ Caught a dragonfly inside a jar/ Fearful when the sky was full of thunder/ And tearful at the falling of a star.")_

There is absolutely no one around this time to whisper comforting things in his ears, no aching voice to paint lovely images of the world and its kindness. There is no soothing caress of fur upon his fingertips from dogs that do not exist anywhere but up in the sky. Inside of himself, Spencer can feel great rivers of suppressed pain threatening to overflow, and he acknowledges the heart-wrenching fact that he has always viewed Jason Gideon as his father figure...and that now he has lost both parents to the blazing inferno of the cold-hearted stars.

The boy inside of himself wants to go search for fireflies.

The man in him has never felt so hopeless.

* * *

_xi. Names, dates, places-the interior scrapbook of an entire life-fade into mists of non-recognition._

* * *

Spencer doesn't know how it happened. Oh, he comprehends at warp-speed how a lethal virus has polluted the garden-fresh scented atmosphere of the laboratory. He grasps the fact that he might now die within a crack of his twig-thin fingers; he realizes how he must protect Morgan before it ever even becomes a thought that the other agent might enter the room. Yet all this aside, Spencer does not know how it happened, doesn't _remember. (It's funny, quite frankly, how the memory can fail you right when you need it the most. All those times he spent wishing he was like everyone else-normal, average-and only now does he come even close to understanding the fact that being normal would be no godsend.)_

**Anthrax! _Anthrax!_**

Like the thundering rhythm within a humming bird's chest, Spencer's heart begins to go into erratic, over paced, palpitations. He cannot put the pieces of this puzzle together just yet, but it doesn't matter. In this moment, instinct overwhelms the pale ghost of his once kingly mind. He pounces like a great cat as he pitches all his body weight upon the door, slamming it shut with a deafening crash. Morgan's face looms like the blazing yellow sun in noon-day heat from behind the pane; unreachable, untouchable, far away and safe from the diseases and dangers which plague humanity.

He can see Morgan's lips moving frantically, forming words, creating sentences and perhaps even coherent thoughts. Spencer doesn't understand them. Words are nothing more than the worst of the perplexing mystery. Another somewhat attainable piece to the missing puzzle. _("Once we had the words. Ox and Falcon. Plow. There was clarity. Savage as horns curved. We lived in stone rooms. We hung our hair out the windows and up it climbed the men. A garden behind the ears, the curls. On each hill a king of that hill. At night the threads were pulled out of the tapestries. The unravelled men screamed. All moons revealed. We had the words.")_

If only he could remember.

His mind lurched and revolved, acting like a tender stomach with the flu. Thoughts, half-formed and illogical, were vomited upwards past his pink lips without consideration, flowing like water. Again, instinct prevailed. _Get back! _he screams. _(Instinct. The only thing existing on Earth which is truly more powerful than love. It is inborn, passed into every human ever created, shaped by the need for survival.)_

"Get back!" he shouts. _(Within the dark recesses of his mind, in a place where thoughts are not formed with words, what he is actually thinking towards his friend is merely this: Save yourself. Ensure your survival. Run away. This is the nature of all human beings-Instinct, Survival, Love. Every human carries the ability to sustain those three things.)_

Spencer stares into the eyes of Derek Morgan...and they are the last real thing he sees before his mind is eaten away by insanity and illusions.

* * *

_xii. Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,/ And here on earth come emulating flies,/ That though they never equal stars in size,/ (And they were never really stars at heart)/ Achieve at times a very star-like start./ Only, of course, they can't sustain the part._

* * *

Being a prodigy had bequeathed Spencer Reid with a more than vivid imagination, and the fact that he was moribund had not in any way affected that simple fact. If dying had any influence on his mind, it was that things were now more horrifyingly tangible. Dreams become part of reality; reality became a half-recalled memory.

His mind was hastily running away from him, seeping out from within his head to stream like smoke under the inaccessible doorway and through the sealed windows. He could not chase the drifting raft of his intelligence for many reasons: One being that he could not leave this damnable room because of his own failure, two being that he now knew that smoke-like the stars-could not be cupped within a human's hands.

Thin and as transparent as paper, his memory leaks and breaks in awkward places. Things are not remembered in order; things which long ago faded into the nothingness are now recalled. _(A nail gun and screaming, Garcia's voice and a secretly recorded message for his mother, the slender tube somersaulting into the air like a mischievous child, the saddened smile of Jason Gideon, the hot sun on the Nile, the biting cold of an early morning with the truck rumbling in the driveway, the boom of JJ's laugh and the feel of Morgan's arm around his shoulders, the slender tube plummeting to the ground like a comet, the war cry of a raven echoing across the skies and the powder as pure and fresh as Canadian snow coating the ground, something about angels weeping.)_

Everything had been perfectly fine one second...and then catastrophic in the one that followed. The tube, unseen until it was too late to react, had been bumped somehow and was sent flying into the air and, as if he was in some bizarre horror movie, it had fallen in slow motion. Spencer had imagined that the crash it would make upon the floor would sound like an explosion...in reality it sounded no louder than a gently nudged wind-chime. The powder spilled lightly out onto the floor and infected the air within milliseconds. He sucked the plague of Egypt into his lungs as if he were a vacuum; consumed the killer and would soon become the killed.

The only thing after that was fear. All consuming fear.

As he laid there, spread eagle on the laboratory floor without a clue as to how he arrived there, he could hear their voices shouting over-head. (_His mind has become a trembling cup filled to the brim with crystal blue waters, jostled and shaken by the many hands of his teammates ...always on the verge of spilling over the sides and leaking away without his consent.)_

He is sure that the disease has already entered his bloodstream, tunnelling like a hungry mole through the flesh and bone of his body to wedge itself, like some sort of disturbing bookworm, in the confines of his personal palace. His mind has been invaded and eaten away. Illusions were all that remained.

As someone pried open his eyelids and shone a yellow light into his eyes, presumably for some odd medical reason which he no longer understood, he saw the last of the fireflies making their way heavenward towards the Elysian Fields.

They twinkled in dazzling colours of yellow, orange and lime-green as they performed their sweet minuets, all elegant loops and twirls. He reached out with gentle hands towards his saviours and smiled, pleased, when they led him away into the light with them.

He knows now that he can reach her, and that nothing is out of his reach.

He closes his chestnut eyes for the very last time...and for the first time finds true peace.

* * *

**First draft:** _05-24-09_

**Revisions:** _1-5-10 _**&**_ 9-23-12_


	5. Appendix

**DISCLAIMER: **_All quoted work is the property of its respective owner. No money was made for the use of such material. No copyright infringement is intended_.

* * *

**PART ONE (STEPS ONE THROUGH THREE) **

* * *

"Our little garden of life, such a charming, fairy-like spot"

**From** "Evergreens" by Jerome K. Jerome

* * *

"Blossom the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels."

**Said **by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

* * *

"The stars pluck from their orbs too, And crowd them in my budget; And whether I'm a roaring boy, Let all the nation judge it."

**From **"I'll Sail Upon The Dog-Star" by Thomas Durfey.

* * *

"Canis Major and its neighboring constellation, Canis Minor, the Little Dog, appear in a number of myths. One legend has the two dogs sitting patiently under a table at which the Twins are dinning. The faint stars that can be seen scattered in the sky between Canis Minor and Gemini are the crumbs the Twins have been feeding to the animals."

**From **"Home Reference Library: Astronomy."

* * *

"Insanity is often the logic of an overtaxed mind"

**Said **by Oliver Wendell Holmes

* * *

**PART TWO (STEPS FOUR THROUGH SIX)**

* * *

"Is there no way out of the mind?"

**Said **by Sylvia Plath

* * *

"And I looked up into the hazy sky, Black clouds in the distance, Black clouds overhead,"

**From **"Black Clouds" by Terence Brame

* * *

"_Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of _**Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.**

_She has her own scale of values for these mementoes, and knows nothing of the market price of precious stones or costly splendor of rare orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt that the most important things are always the best remembered; only we must learn the real importance of what we see and hear in the world is to be measured at last by its meaning, its significance, its intimacy with the heart of our heart and the life of our life. And when we find a little token of the past very safely and imperishably kept among our recollections, we must believe that memory has made no mistake. It is because that little thing has entered into our experience most deeply, that it stays with us and we cannot lose it._

_You have forgotten many a famous scene that you traveled far too look upon. You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mount Blanc, the roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of Patti's crystalline voice has left no distant echo in your remembrance, and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of a dream. But there is a nameless valley among the hills where you can still trace every curve of the steam, and see the foam bells floating on the pool below the bridge, and the long moss wavering in the current. There is a rustic singing of a girl passing through the fields at sunset, that still repeats its far-off cadence in your listening ears._

_There is a small flower trembling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath the open sky, that never withers through all the changing years; the wind passes over it, but it is never gone - it abides forever in your soul, an amaranthine blossom of beauty and truth."_

"Memories" by Henry Van Dyke

* * *

"A boy's will is the winds will"

**From**"The Haven Of Character" by Henry Van Dyke

* * *

"Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the end of the day saying, " I will try again tomorrow."

**Said **by Mary Anne Radmacher

* * *

"Lichen, ivy, and moss, keep evergreen the trees, That stand half-flayed and dying, And the dead trees on their knees"

**From **"The Hollow Wood" by Edward Thomas

* * *

My Mother said that I never should, Play with the gypsies in the wood; The wood was dark; The grass was green;"

**From**"My Mother Said" - Poet Unknown

* * *

"The leaves lie thick upon the ground. It's there I love to kick my way, And hear the crisp and crashing sound."

**From**"Beech Leaves" by "James Reeves"

* * *

"I went down a narrow road, and I lost my cap. The firefly found it. Firefly, firefly, give me back my cap!"

**From**"The Firefly" - A tradition poem from Italy

* * *

"A bee, a living bee, at the windowglass, trying to get out, doomed, it can't understand."

An Untitled Poem by Stan Rice from "Pig's Progress" (1976)

* * *

**PART THREE (STEPS SEVEN THROUGH NINE)**

* * *

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools."

**From** "Macbeth" by Shakespeare

* * *

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."

**Said **by Oscar Wilde

* * *

"The windows of my soul I throw wide open to the sun."

**Said **by John Greenleaf Whittier

* * *

"For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams-"

**From** "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe  


* * *

"Drugs are a bet with your mind."

**Said **by Jim Morrison

* * *

"Silence is the true friend that never betrays"

**Said **by Confucious

* * *

**PART THREE (STEPS TEN THROUGH TWELVE)**

* * *

"The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

**Said **by Norman Cousins

* * *

"Yesterday a child came out to wonder/ Caught a dragonfly inside a jar/ Fearful when the sky was full of thunder/ And tearful at the falling of a star."

**From** "The Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell

* * *

"Names, dates, places - the interior scrapbook of an entire life-fade into mists of non-recognition."

**Said **by Matt Clark

* * *

"Once we had the words. Ox and Falcon. Plow. There was clarity. Savage as horns curved. We lived in stone rooms. We hung our hair out the windows and up it climbed the men. A garden behind the ears, the curls. On each hill a king of that hill. At night the threads were pulled out of the tapestries. The unravelled men screamed. All moons revealed. We had the words."

"The Words Once" by Stan Rice from "Whiteboy" (1976)

* * *

"Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,/ And here on earth come emulating flies,/ That though they never equal stars in size,/ (And they were never really stars at heart)/ Achieve at times a very star-like start./ Only, of course, they can't sustain the part."

" Fireflies In The Garden" by Robert Frost


End file.
